Direct Ideological Rivalry

Direct Rivalry among established ideological production systems is the most common perspective taken, especially when the sociopolitical stakes are high, as directly and openly competing belief paradigms invest heavily in juxtaposition; a critical role in continued re-territorialization. In this sense, we can see there is a Diachronic Operability in addition to the Synchronic Operability of the production processes of valuation-signification and its capacity for Polarizing Territorialization. Diachronic Operability weaves a narrative of valuation-signification based on the history of critical truth-ideas, their evolution of meaning, and records a new re-valuation based on the contradistinction of materialist history over-against the current necessity of belief. Synchronic Operability takes a static representation of The Moment as perceived by the valuation-signification of that context for justification against the present re-valuation effort, likewise treated as a static point.

Despite this tendency toward direct juxtaposition, it should be clear that the socioeconomic forces external to the conflict between two or more ideological systems shape the nature of decisions made within the conflict, with a recursive reflexivity over-against forces applied within the direct conflict. Direct Rivalry between ideological adversary-systems that are in open, direct competition for the same “customer” should likewise be the easiest to imagine: for instance, religious institutions that take a similar view of “faith” and “the soul” but a polarizing view of “salvation”, or professional guilds that can raise economic rents distributed to their members through an increase in barriers to entry. To whatever extent ideological industries share constructs across competitors, the role of direct rivalry may increase or decrease based on isolation from the other socioeconomic forces. For instance, differentiated extremist political platforms, narrow in their Sociopolitical Product, that find some temporary and cyclical common ground in their opposition of several other political platforms, giving rise to a bi-partisan dialectic that largely ignores the fragmented parties that refuse to “pick a side”.

We can see that Confusion of Levels plays an enormous role, as an apparent conflict at one level may seem extremist and violent viewed in isolation, but appears to be little more than a sibling rivalry to outsiders at a “higher” level of observation: for example, the continued rivalry, schisms, and fragmentation of American sects of Protestantism after World War II due to the sudden sentiment of Christian moral high-ground, exhibited in the stories told of “saving the world from the Nazis”; contrast this with the sudden unity of these same ideological systems once Islamic fundamentalist extremism made its threat as an externality clear by attacking “Capitalism, Democracy, and Christianity” simultaneously – manifest when two airplanes were crashed in the World Trade Center.

The same problem should be thoroughly evaluated in the creation of ideological strategy – whether “Lean” or “Digital” or “Agile” transformation is the goal. Ideological systems produce information that is exchanged by those who believe their production of information to be true to reality – a careful view of the organization from the perspective of each entrenched ideological system at play, and their sunk cost establishing their territorial boundaries, will make clear how to exploit Maneuver Economics to shift the overarching balance of power in favor of your new ideology.